Lincoln's Birthday at Plattekill 2-12-2016

I don't know too many people that get Lincoln's Birthday off. I feel spoiled to have the day to myself when my wife is at work and my kids are at school. But that doesn't stop me from taking advantage. One year, when it fell on a Wedensday, I managed to have an 18,000 + day at 450 foot Mount Peter and still pick my kids up from school before three. This year, after hatching and  discarding a few overly ambitious schemes (maybe day-tripping Burke mountain isn't practical) I settled on my favorite NYS mountain: Plattekill.



I parked in the upper lot around 9:30, cashed in my Liftopia printout for a ticket, booted up as fast as I could and jumped on the triple. For some reason, I always start with Face when I ski at Platty. It was a good choice. It was around 11 F so they had the snow guns blasting Almost the full length of the trail with soft, high-quality product that was a pleasure to ski on.




After a fast run under the guns on Face, I jumped on the double chair to check out Plunge, another favorite. At the top, I encountered a patroller putting up a "thin cover" sign at the entrance to Just-Do-It and I asked him it the trail was open or not. He laughed, "This is Plattekill man. You can go where you want. It's rocky in spots though. You might want to check out the groomers before you tear your skis up in there."

I followed his advice. Plunge was mostly covered in corduroy, a bit hard at the top but it got softer as you went down. Next I hit NorthFace. It was a little more crusty but  carve-able and I had the whole wide place to myself so I let my skis run. By then I was ready for Blockbuster so I went back up and pointed my skis down Just-Do-It. It looked like only one or two people had been down there ahead of me.

I tried to ski around the visible rocks and float in the three or four inches of fresh snow on top. I did pretty good until just before the top of Blockbuster where there was an unavoidable little rock garden. On subsequent runs, I stopped there, popped out of my skis, and walked ten or so feet to avoid more rock shots.




Blockbuster was awesome. I didn't get first tracks but I wasn't far behind. The trail was covered in soft, fresh, natural snow. It felt great underfoot and was just deep enough to slow you down a little without making you work too hard. Once I got the lay of the land, I fell into a rhythm of alternating between Blockbuster and skiing under the guns on Face, with a few cruiser thrown in to rest my legs. My new friend, Jessie the ski patroller, was following the same routine, Blockbuster and Face, switching to a board halfway through the day. We kept bumping into each other at the top of Blockbuster; seemed like a nice guy.




One of the things I love about Plattekill is the plethora of narrow New England-style tails they have there. Unfortunately, these were almost all closed and the trees were not in play either. My favorite is Chute. On my first ride on the triple, I made a point of checking it out and it looked real sketchy. Later I took a look from the entrance to the trail and that wasn't any better so I didn't ski it.

Near the end of the day, I shared a chair with an instructor that seemed about sixteen tears old. He told me he'd skied Chute earlier in the day and it was thin but he hadn't hit any rocks. Whether I'm overly optimistic or just super gullible, that was all I needed to hear. The next run I dropped in. It was fun but that kid was full of it. I hit rock after rock and ended taking my skis off to get past one nasty spot near the bottom. Oh well. Happy Birthday President Lincoln.

Very cool! I wish I had seen you, we could have done a few runs together. I skied from 8:45-11 before headding back to college at Delhi. Yesterday was definitely the day to go. Today was bittier, cold at about -15 at the end of the day. My understanding is that tomorrow is supossed to be colder. The good news is that minus a chance of rain tuesday, the week looks pretty reasonable.  Now they're saying it might even be snow!

Thanks Ethan
I thought the same thing when I saw your post on the conditions thread. Next time.